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Crumpet was having a whale of a time running along the harbour wall at Brixham.

Taking in the sights.

Then disaster struck and she was off.

HELP!

On Boxing Day we popped over to Haytor to watch the South Devon Hunt.

Stirrup Cup

I wouldn't usually put so many photos in one post, but Dartmoor is such a staggeringly beautiful place, even in the darkness of December, that no amount of photos can really do it justice. Here's Widdecombe.

Crowds of masochists and sadists assemble at 11am for the annual Christmas Day swim on Budleigh Salterton beach.

And the lifeboat heads off to Exmouth to patrol the 12 o'clock Exmouth swim.

In other Budleigh news, the Billy is now the Ocean House Cafe & Deli (added to the Dead Pubs Society) and the cobb / stucco villa that collapsed last year has been rebuilt with with stunning new windows to match the stunning old ones.

Well...Lewes, South Downs and Crumpet in snow.

We walked out the front door around nine and Crumpet started, shocked by the whiteness she lept back. Soon though she was ambling along eating snow and painting some of it yellow. After an evening holed up in the Lewes Arms, supping pints of Harveys Best, we ventured back and took a walk up Chapel Hill (the rat you see pictured at the bottom later spent a good quarter hour gnawing icicles off her leg fur).

The net of lights over the Lewes Christmas tree is a disgrace as far as I am concerned. A piss poor effort by the council.

Were slightly damp.

As a child I spent many a happy hour in Scarborough, and I have many photos of me in Hairy Bob's Cave to prove it. Imagine my dismay to find that they've built a bloody skatepark infront of it.

What would Bob have thought?

Dammit, that's my favourite night of the year over for another year.

Bonfire Prayers

Remember, remember the Fifth of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot
I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow

By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match
Holler boys, holler boys, ring bells ring
Holler boys, holler boys, God Save the King!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o'cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him

Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we'll say old Pope is dead

Hip Hip Hoorah!
Hip Hip Hoorah!
Hip Hip Hoorah!

At 'The Strid' the wide and shallow River Wharfe narrows to seven feet and plunges to depth of....Well, who knows?

The Strid is a section of the river that is much deeper than it is wide. The river before the Strid, perhaps sixty feet wide and six feet deep, is abruptly turned on its side and funnelled through a long rocky channel, maybe six to eight feet wide and nobody-knows-how-deep. I seem to recall that the name Strid comes from the word stride, or maybe it was the other way around. In theory, with the correct combination of long legs, agility and stupidity, it’s possible to jump or stride over at the narrowest point.

Failure to jump the Strid is inevitably fatal and no one who has fallen into the tumultuous gorge was ever known to survive.

Legend has it that Alice de Rumilly founded the downstream Bolton Priory after her son William, Boy of Egremont, pretender to the Scottish throne, was swept to his death at the Strid in 1128 when his horse failed to jump it during a hunt.

My maternal great grandmother jumped it at age eighteen. She obviously didn't see the 'danger' sign.

Autumn begins with dancing in the Old at Harveys Yard.